A fraction deeper in awareness than the "human" celebration of Christmastime – the family love, the buying of presents, the joy and gratitude of giving and receiving – is the presence and significance of Christ and Christmas Day.
Christ or Buddha or God-presence is our true identity. We are each infinite, eternal beings, individual and unique, and with a divine purpose we have the opportunity to fulfill each day for the glory of the whole.
Our infinity of being is forever at hand, ever freely available to us as tangible expression. It expresses not by might, not by power – not by personal faculty or effort – but by virgin birth.
Christ (Truth) cannot be born (made visible and tangible) of a human level of awareness, of mental or physical effort. Christ is present in you (and every person) this instant, within and without, but it takes your becoming a virgin to witness Its birth in your experience.
We have heard it in Miracle Self classes: Where we, personal, human, material selves are present, God is absent to sense; where we are absent, God is present.
The personal sense of self fogs God (Good) from our experience. Sense reports whatever we are being. Whatever our state of consciousness is – whatever we believe as being real – stands everywhere throughout our senses appearing as real.
As we live in mistaken identity, as a sense of separation and difference from God, as a "human" instead of a god, God or Christ cannot "get through." We live by mentality and physicality, by the measure of personal knowledge, skill and effort we can bring to each of life's situations. The fog of our mis-identity is too thick and fools us into making personal, finite effort for finite results. Little do we know of our spiritual identity, of our infinity of being, of the boundless life, love, harmony and wealth that exist right where we are, and that are ever instantaneously available to us and all in our worlds as we awaken to our true identity.
Christ is heaven objectively sensed – "as in heaven, so on earth".
Christ is the finished kingdom experienced as real and visible self and earth.
Christ is life itself, love itself, harmony itself, boundlessness itself witnessed as the truth of our here-and-now objective existence.
Christ is oneness born in us that enables us to clearly see and tangibly live the miracles of truth within and without.
Christ is the garden of Eden once more open to us.
Christ is paradise here-and-now, the instantaneous fulfillment of purpose.
The Kingdom of God (Good)
Is Born of Virgin Being
When the Pharisee, Nicodemus, asked the Master how the kingdom of heaven is made visible on earth, Jesus said,
Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he
cannot see the kingdom of God.
Nicodemus
saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is
old? can he enter the
second time into his mother’s womb, and be
born? Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man
be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the
kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that
which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto
thee, Ye must be born again. The
wind bloweth where it listeth,
and thou hearest the sound thereof, but
canst not tell whence it
cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one
that is born of the
Spirit.
Nicodemus answered and said unto him, How can these things
be? Jesus answered and said unto him, Art thou a master of
Israel, and knowest not these things? Verily, verily, I say unto
thee, We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen;
and ye receive not our witness. If I have told you earthly things,
and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly
things? And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that
came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in
heaven.
We have been born into this world, into objective sense (born of water). Now we have to also be born of the Spirit so that heaven becomes real and visible as earth. The "two" must become one in us. "Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven."
We have to awaken (be born again) to our spiritual identity and the spiritual identity of all.
We have to lose our belief in, desire for, and reliance on everything of the mental, physical, and material realm (this world). Devoid of these we are virgin; whereas if we continue to consummate the marriage of spirit and matter we lose our virginity.
Maintaining and protecting our virginity consists of knowing that God, which is spirit, is omnipresence, therefore is all of all; that spirit is the one power, the one law, the one being, mind, body, and world, and living one hundred percent by this truth.
We cannot continue to want God for something. God is God alone, and because God is infinite, all is God. The only legitimate desire, therefore, is for the experience of God as God itself is.
In this virgin state, free of mentality, physicality, and materiality, the Christ can be born in us.
In other words, we have to be heavenly (spiritual) beings on earth in order to witness earth as it is in heaven. "No man hath ascended up to heaven [no man witnesses the harmonies, freedom and purpose of true identity], but he that came down from heaven."
We have to "bring heaven down to earth" by our conscious, practical realization of our and earth's spiritual identity.
Now, in the silence and spiritual receptivity of our virgin state, desiring nothing except the experience of God within for nothing except the glory of God itself, Christ is born in us: We feel the presence welling up within, permeating our senses, revealing its glory.
We receive the most precious gift in all of heaven and earth – God or Christ itself giving itself to us.
Our senses are filled with the heavenly light and we see heaven as earth. Our true identity is revealed; our true mind, body, and world are now witnessed and experienced as they are: as the finished kingdom of God, as the first chapter of Genesis.
We bear witness to our spiritual capacities and power. We are the light of the world and the world opens and responds to our very presence.
Our impersonal presence heals the sick, feeds the hungry, houses the homeless, clothes the naked, comforts and lifts the poor in spirit, pacifies every conflict, dissolves every discord.
The birth of the Christ in us is the Word made flesh. Each and every time we, in a virgin state of being, turn within and make ourselves available for God to be God in us, the Word (the presence and activity) is made flesh – made visible, tangible, and real on or as earth. The false (material) earth melts and the true is revealed.
Answered Prayer
When what we are hearing today is understood, the reason for unanswered prayer is also understood, and the infallibility of answered prayer becomes clear.
True prayer is the Word of God made flesh, not the word of a human being begging and pleading a "Santa Claus" God (as Joel described it) for material fulfillment.
Answered prayer is Christ born in us – the "still, small voice" heard or felt within our virgin (pure spiritual) state of receptivity; it is the Word made tangible (made flesh) within us. Each time it is experienced "outer" harmony, health, abundance, love, and peace are infallible (because the inner is the outer).
Another way we can understand answered prayer is that the finished kingdom – the prayer that is already answered before we call, but which we have been unable to see with material sense – is made visible and real each time the presence and activity of God is born in us.
The Real Christmas
What greater gift can we give each other and our worlds than the gift of our virgin state of being – our impersonal selves, our silence, and our true spiritual receptivity – in which and through which the Christ, the Word of God, is born (is made flesh in us) for all who touch our consciousness.
It is the gift I give to you this Christmas day, and every day.
With my Love and most joyful blessings to you, your families, and all in your worlds,
Paul